The actual game consists of a few select levels from Donkey Kong Country with the addition of a point counter and a few minor tweaks to encourage scoring, the goal being to score as many points as possible. The tree house and banana cave at the start of Jungle Hijinxs have been disabled, and all of the animal tokens in the early levels have been replaced with Banana Bunches, making it impossible to reach the bonus round without the usage of a cheating device
What do you mean a modified version? What or the point of that if they are sending people to a contest after? Unfair.
https://www.mariowiki.com/Donkey_Kong_Country_Competition_Cartridge
There’s a 1.2 version that fixed several bugs and glitches, including at least one warp
Edit: Actually, this completely checks out! https://www.mariowiki.com/Donkey_Kong_Country_Competition_Cartridge
TIL! At least they used the same version for everyone, including the later competition.